Keesha Jackson-Muir of Braddock Elementary named FCPS 2018 Outstanding Principal

Jackson-Muir [FCPS]

Two of the top three awards announced at the Fairfax County Public Schools honors ceremony went to educators in the Annandale/Mason District Area.

Braddock Elementary School Principal Keesha Jackson-Muir was  named Fairfax County Public Schools 2018 Outstanding Principal, and Alissa Oginsky, a sixth-grade teacher at Holmes Middle School was named 2018 Outstanding Secondary Teacher.

Among other award winners in the Annandale/Mason area, Emily McCloud, a math teacher at Stuart High School, was named Outstanding New Secondary Teacher, and Nelson Villalobos, a safety and security assistant at Frost Middle School, was named Outstanding School-based Support Employee.

Jackson-Muir was cited for supporting a coding program for students in grades preK-5, the Kids Are Scientists Too initiative with Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, VEX IQ Robotics, and the Global STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) Classroom, a partnership with schools in Guatemala.

A strong supporter of lifelong learning, Jackson-Muir modeled that concept by joining the fifth-grade band and learning to play the clarinet along other first-year band students.

She was also praised for cultivating leadership in others, developing a professional learning community, increasing the number of minority students participating in the local level IV Advanced Academic Program from two students to more than 150, and increasing Virginia Standards of Learning scores by 10-20 points.

Before Jackson-Muir was appointed Braddock principal in 2014, she had been an assistant principal at Parklawn and Hayfield elementary schools, a LEAD Fairfax administrative intern at Belvedere Elementary School, and a gifted and talented specialist at Fort Belvoir and Beech Tree elementary schools.

Oginsky [FCPS]

Oginsky, a social studies lead teacher, was praised for sharing resources with and providing professional learning opportunities for her colleagues at Holmes.

She makes her classes come alive through the use of primary sources. Her students get to touch artifacts from West Africa, analyze portraits from the colonial time period, and interact with maps from the Age of Exploration through the Civil War.

Holmes Principal Margaret Barnes called Oginsky a “dynamic teacher who actively engages her students in rigorous learning experiences each day” and “connects students to larger, global concepts to make what they are learning relevant to their everyday lives.”

As an example, Oginsky worked with students to research the school’s history to create a timeline display for Holmes’ 50th anniversary.

The FCPS 2018 Outstanding Elementary Teacher award went to Mary Bauer of Orange Hunt Elementary School in Springfield.